To mark Women in Engineering Day, Editor Jeff D Alessio asked 47 high-achievers with connections to one of higher ed’s most highly decorated colleges of engineering to give us the first
E-Mail
IMAGE: Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed small-scale robots that can fertilize, weed and cull single plants in a field. This photo shows testing in an Iowa State. view more
Credit: Photo by Ashlyn Rairdin and courtesy of Soumik Sarkar/Iowa State University
AMES, Iowa - A gardener hoping for a crop of the juiciest summer tomatoes might tend to each and every plant in a plot. But a farmer working to feed the world?
Researchers believe it s possible. They re applying and integrating layers of technologies - including sensors, machine learning, artificial intelligence, high-throughput phenotyping platforms such as drones and small-scale rolling robots that can also fertilize, weed and cull single plants in a field - with the ultimate goal of replacing farmers reliance on heavy machinery and broadcast spraying in operations of all sizes.